Beneath It All
by Stripes that Parallel
Summary: After being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, Kurogane Suwa, an ex-marine, is sent to his short-lived home of Louisiana to care for his ailing mother. While battling his inner demons and struggling to readjust to everyday life, Kurogane finds himself drawn to a unusual shop headed by an even more mysterious man—and all too suddenly, his world changes. A modern-day AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Beneath It All**

[After being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, Kurogane Suwa, an ex-marine, is sent to his short-lived home of Louisiana to care for his ailing mother. While battling his inner demons and struggling to readjust to everyday life, Kurogane finds himself drawn to a unusual shop headed by an even more mysterious man—and all too suddenly, his world changes. A modern-day AU.]

**Rating - High**** T** [strong but infrequent language, mentions of war-related injuries and deaths, some graphic descriptions, mentions of substance abuse, rating may change in the future]

**Warning** \- Frequent flashbacks shown of a mix of historical and fictional events, violence, minor blood and gore, tons of angst, mental instability, sad Kurogane, angsty Fai, sick Kuroparents, coma-induced Ashura, magic fights, and the like.

**Disclaimer **\- I own nothing except my own knowledge and imagination, a crappy computer, and increasingly diminishing free time. Inspiration for this came from history lessons, "The Skeleton Key", and ideas that I had been bouncing around for a while. Enjoy!

* * *

_"We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost."_

-Erich Maria Remarque

* * *

**_Beneath It__ All_**

* * *

The ring of a gunshot still echoed in his ear.

His temples throbbed, and he could feel the blood in his veins pulsing against his neck. There was shouting, screaming, flickering in and out of his focus like a lamp on the brink of a dying voltage. It was bright—a burning, piercing brightness of sorts that made him want to turn away—and he tried to call out. His eyes weren't open.

Then it stopped.

The rush of the wind, the heat, the sweat on his chest, the roar of the jets' engines, the scent of exhaust and blood, the rattling of machine guns, the shrill pelting of empty bullet shells, the taste of copper on his teeth, the ache against his skull. It all stopped.

He felt weightless, nonexistent almost, except for the heavy sense of lead bearing down on him when he tried to move. He couldn't tell if he was standing up or lying flat. His nerves tingled and his lashes flickered, and in the murky blackness that surrounded him, a filtered orange light floated across his vision, as if the sun were pouring down on his eyelids.

It was silent. And then it started again.

The screams, and the rings, and the stench, and the parched air all came back again, rushing into his skin like an injection and pushing a pressure that had formed in his chest up his throat and into his mouth, until he gasped, and his eyes flew open.

The sunlight stung against his irises, a white-hot flash that faded into dusty green. He stared, unblinking, into a cloud of rolling tan smoke. His chest was heaving, but he could hear nothing—nothing except the distant echo of voices and a pulsing, drawn out siren in his ear. He squeezed his eyes shut, sand and all, and coughed—an ugly, wretched thing that scraped against his throat and made his chest burn—and was unprepared for the surge of hot iron that flooded his mouth. His throat constricted with a desperate choke of air, pushing his head roughly to the side, and his stomach lurched as he heaved a stream of crimson into the blood-speckled grass beside him.

His left shoulder felt as if a thousand needles were embedded in his skin, and when he had steadied his shaky breath enough to squint up at the sky, he saw palm trees black with smoke. A voice was yelling at him.

"Kurogane!"

Was that his name?

"_Kurogane!_"

_Where am I?_

"Oh shit. _Shit_. Someone get a paramedic. Now! Move it!"

He felt hands pulling at his forearms, ripping the numbed skin at his shoulder. Pain abruptly seared across his torso, melting into a stream of torn flesh and piercing his nerves with the force of a knife. He bit his lip to hold back a scream as the world spun around his feet, but the action did little to keep the sound behind his teeth. He stumbled against the broad frame beside him, his head swimming with smells and sounds and too much for him process all at once.

"We're in the open! You have to move!"

The voice faded in and out beside his ear. He stared hazily down at sand and bloodied grass, his boots scraping against the ground beneath him.

"Dammit, Kurogane, _you have to move_!"

The scream of bullets raced past them, and with a grunt, teeth bared, he forced his leg down against the earth and _pushed_. His feet, half-dragging, staggered against tufts of dry weeds and fallen limbs as he struggled alongside the form with a voice, and then it was bright again, bright even against his shut eyes, and he sucked in a ragged breath as he felt heat leaking from his shoulder.

It was dark. It was silent. It was still.

It stopped.

_Where am I?_

He tried to breathe again, slower this time, and the weight that had previously been on his chest was gone now. Air filled his lungs, sterile and crisp, and he had a faint recollection that he had breathed it in before. Then he heard the beeping: quiet, consistent beeps to his left, always beeping, loud. And his eyes opened.

"—Remember, don't forget the stabilization."

"Certainly."

"And his mother?"

"She'll need to be contacted, of course."

"What about—"

"Don't tell him. Wait until after the surgery."

"Right. Did you confirm the symptoms?"

"Yes. It's what we thought, typical in his circumstance. He should be fine."

The conversation floated across his mind, half-understood and half-discarded as he tried to pull himself up against the plastic handles on the bed. Then he was steadied by a nurse, calmed against his questions, and had everything explained.

But this was long ago.

He still remembered it, though, remembered it like it was yesterday—waking in a hospital in New Jersey, weeks after being sent to Hong Kong for emergency treatment. He woke up bandaged from his shoulder to his waist, being told that if that bullet had caused anymore nerve damage, he would've had his arm amputated. He was supposed to count himself lucky.

The physical wounds weren't bad; the nerve damage was fixed, the tissue scars in his chest mended, the gash in his leg stitched. Nothing all too disabling, except for the occasional stings of pain from his shoulder. The flesh had healed as best as it could, but the wound still ached, and they told him it always would. It was a part of him, now.

He felt his hand climb to rub against the tense skin absently. Almost a year and a half, and he still thought of these things. Still thought of Cambodia, and Vietnam, and Dubai, and Mongolia. Not all of them were wars. Some of them were just travel routes, scenes to pass through; the memories of war scars that opened every now and then like a wound burned by hatred.

He never understood war. He never understood the killing, or the destruction, or the blood that caked under his fingernails—but he had done it all the same. He had killed, and he had destroyed, and he had more blood on his hands than he wanted to remember. But it had been said and done, and that was that.

The doctors had told him that the memories—the images, and screams, and blood, and pain—would be continuous, with this. They diagnosed him with a disorder dealing with post-traumatic stress, something he had heard of only briefly before entering the field. He never thought it would happen to him.

In short, it meant war trauma—but to Kurogane, it meant hell.

He could be fine, easily so, conversing with an old friend in New York about work and life, and things of the past. Then, the shower of pennies from a coin purse, dropped clumsily in the search of a business card, would leave him stock-still and shaking, staring wide-eyed at nothing, his grip on the granite counter strong enough to leave bruises on his fingertips at the abrupt remembrance of bullet shells at his feet.

Tomoyo had repeatedly given her apologies, and once he had calmed down, he shrugged the instance off like it was nothing. That was all he could do. But she couldn't look at him the same, and he knew it; because Kurogane, the one who used to be so powerful—who could turn a fellow marine cold just by looking into their eyes—had been reduced to this. He was not the man she knew. And he did not know himself.

This had all happened over the course of a few months. After his diagnosis, his doctors had kept him hospitalized in New Jersey for five weeks, to monitor his progress. Once they were satisfied he would be okay, he was released onto the streets with a bag of prescriptions and a typed list of resources for the symptoms. He was told to take it easy for a while—to go somewhere quiet, visit his mother, and enjoy a few years off.

If he felt confident in joining the field afterwards, his recruiter would provide him with the application again. He doubted, bitterly, that reentering was an option.

Dragging his mind from these thoughts, Kurogane moved to look at the polished tile floors below him, shuffling his boots a little restlessly. He always ended up thinking about the war, and the symptoms, and everything he wasn't supposed to when it was quiet, so he chose to focus on the clamor of the crowd instead.

The airport was full with the heat of summer and shuffling bodies, and the scent of sweat and fragrant perfume mingled across the terminal. Old fans pushed the air from one end of the glass hall to the other, a sluggish creaking of metal blades that held his attention for a few moments. He rested his weight on one leg, popped his knee out, and then moved to the other, grimacing at the tension that still pulled on his calf if held too long. Every now and then, his gaze would hover on the pavement outside the aged windows to his left, waiting for the cab he had ordered, before flickering to the paper in his hand.

It was a letter that been mailed to him during his stay in New York, composed of few short passages written in a thin blue ink. His mother had always been brief with letters. If she wrote for too long, her fingers would get tired, as she had told him countless times before.

His father had died a few months before his transfer to New Jersey, a mixture of lung damage from years past and liver disease. His mother had stated simply that she had moved—she couldn't stand an empty house with empty picture frames—and told him to come whenever he was ready.

He had pushed the confrontation off, disappearing into glasses of whiskey and the cool sheets of Tomoyo's spare bedroom instead, as he shut his eyes against dreams that were all too real. He had waited, regretfully so, until pleading eyes and a sharp tongue warned him that wasting away his life was not helping him get any better. The confrontation was rough, but it was true; and so he packed his things into his worn duffle, walked onto the littered streets of Manhattan, and took the earliest flight to Louisiana.

His parents had moved there during his junior year of high school. His father had a job that needed frequent relocating, and packing their bags had become a sort of normality, for them. Over the course of several years, his small family had trekked all along the country, from the golden-rayed Californian coastline to the mossy tree-laden lanes of South Carolina. Despite the new scenery he encountered every few years, more and more he found himself missing the smell of pine and the earthy forest air that was familiar to the mountains of northern Japan.

It had been twenty-three years since they left for the States. The eyes of his toddler self hardly remembered Japan for what it was, but he had always wanted to go back. He figured that entering the military would allow him to get out of the alcove that had sheltered him since his childhood—to escape the baggage of a cluttered truck and demands for acceptance, to make his own decisions and carve his own path—and maybe even catch a glimpse of the Japanese coastline.

He got out. He saw the world. He breathed in the smell of acid and blood, and saw people whom he had never known staring lifeless into the sky. He never saw Japan.

It was a cold fact, but after years of mulling over the same bleak realities, he had chosen to push these thoughts from his mind. His past was what it was. His war experiences were no different. He enlisted with the knowledge that he would be told to kill, and when the time came, those orders were carried out. War came with great sacrifices, and he had accepted this well before he had entered.

Some sacrifices, however, came with a hefty price. And with one hand climbing to his shoulder again, kneading habitually against knotted skin, Kurogane sourly reminded himself that there was a reason he was here.

Those sacrifices had broken him, had turned him into a wind-up toy whose gears had been yanked out and then haphazardly replaced. He had missing pieces, and he didn't know where to find them. He didn't know how. He used to be a soldier, a fighter, a leader—now what was he?

_You still are_, Tomoyo had said sharply, in those long months before when bloodshot eyes had stared into a dark room and shaky hands had grasped empty bottles of ale. _You still are. Because you don't give up. So don't you dare give up now. If you can't find something to take care of, if you can't find the will to take care of yourself, then you take care of her. You're all she has left, now._

In that musty airport, listening to the creaking of the fans overhead and the echoes of passersby, Kurogane's fingers tightened around his mother's letter. If he couldn't start by fixing himself, then he only thing he could do was start with home. And with that resolve, he straightened his stance, dropped his hand from his shoulder, and held the side-drawn strap of his worn duffle tightly.

It was only a few more moments before the cab he had ordered pulled up to the curb, and with a slow exhale, Kurogane Suwa walked across the musty terminal and stepped out into the Louisianan sun.

* * *

**A/N - **After rewriting this over and over again, I finally settled on this opening. This ended up being a much shorter start than I originally wanted to begin with, and turned into a brief introduction of sorts, but I actually really like how it turned out and thinks this gives a good kickstart to a new story!

So, to give this some background, anything related to mental issues and the brain have always been fascinating to me. After doing some research a few months ago, I started looking up the effects of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in war-related scenarios, and was heavily intrigued by it. And, _voilà_, an idea was born. Kurogane practically carves the mold of a warrior, so it made sense to me that he would be involved with the military. The idea of him being an ex-marine seemed more reasonable to me since they are the front-line fighters that see so much hell during wars. Having him experience war trauma as a result to his position came to me as a way to push his character into a challenging direction against his typical demeanor, and writing the flashbacks and scenes from his memories was very fun for me.

Anyways, thank you so much for reading! I hope that this story is interesting for you and that you will stick around to read more! Feel free to leave comments on your thoughts, suggested improvements, and the like :)


	2. Chapter 2

**_2_**

* * *

_Nagano, Japan_

_1953_

_On the banks of a pebbled spring, a young boy is crouched in the sand, pulling strips of moss from a slime-slicked stone found by the water. It had rained the night before, and the air is thick with a cool, fragrant musk of pine and damp soil. The child's mother, a thin, soft-eyed woman, stands to the side of the spring, a hand resting on the wet bark of a tree that is one in a thousand in the grove that surrounds them. She closes her eyes._

_The mountain is quiet today. No more storms._

_His fascination in the mysterious green fuzz depleted, the child begins picking at small rocks by his feet._

"_Youou," his mother chides softly, her words caught dewily in the web of the mountain air, "Your father is waiting."_

_The boy mumbles grumpily in response, sticking a finger in the shallow waters of the spring's shoreline. She calls his name again, and his small shoulders stoop into a moody arch._

_His mother smiles then, unable to hold back her slight laughter. He is so much like his father. The sound bubbles up her throat before becoming caught, and she stands rigidly a moment as a coughing fit seizes her chest. The boy at the spring stills._

"_Is it the cold?" he whispers at last, when the horrible sound that builds and builds finally stops. His mother's voice is scratchy when she speaks, prickled like the splinter of a worn board, but as she draws her palm away from her mouth and hesitantly wipes the bloody smear across the leaves at her feet, she smiles. _

"_No. I like the cold," she reassures him, hoarsely. She stands, dusts off her hands, and walks over to him. "Now, let's go home." Her child's rebelliousness has faded away into an uneasy silence, and he follows her without fuss, one hand grasping the sleeve of his mother's kimono. "You've dirtied your clothes," she adds, and runs her fingers through the short, rain-dampened locks of her son's dark hair, which stubbornly stick straight up despite her attempts to flatten them. "Make sure you wash as soon as we get back, alright?"_

_The boy makes a face at the idea of a bath—and the very concept has always been strange to him, having a bucket of cold water dumped upon his head and a clammy white solid meant to cleanse skin scrubbing against his back—but he does not protest any further than a frown and a childish sigh of displeasure. _

_In his youth and innocence, he pretends to forget the red stains streaked on the tea-green leaves behind them, and she pretends that she doesn't know how much it hurts him. He is far too young to understand the weight of the burden she bares, but she knows that it is heavy for him all the same; and even as small as he is, he cares for her with the same concern that her husband whispers with against her neck, each passing night before he leaves for work in the fields. _

_She smiles, squeezes his small fingers between hers, and heads toward the worn path that snakes down the mountain._

_The walk home is quiet, and there are no storms._

* * *

The cab lurched with a gravelly pop across a steep pot hole, and with a start, Kurogane found himself staring into the back of a black leather headrest. He blinked rapidly, clearing the hazy vignette of the cab's interior from his vision, and released a strained sigh as he rubbed his eyes.

He wasn't sure how long they had been driving, but judging from the sweltering condition of the car, he figured it must have been a while. The sun had soaked the dark interior of the cab into a deadly sponge that threatened to burn any patch of bare skin brave enough to touch it. The backs of Kurogane's calves felt glued to the edge of his seat, his forehead beaded with sweat, and this coupled with the cab's failing AC, which spluttered and puffed as if on its dying breaths, made it feel as though he just woke up in a goddamn oven.

It amazed him that he had managed to even doze off at all, given that heat and sleep never seemed to mix well for him, but his surprise was not a strong one—the exhaustion from a flight made of up seemingly endless transfers and delays had finally sunk in the moment he had slumped against the cab's crackled back seat, and it had been easy for him to shut his eyes and drift into dreams.

He pushed loose strands of damp hair that had fallen across his eyes back against his head, and gave up on reattempting the action when they fell out of place a second time. His throat was scorching, and everything from his skin to the air that seeped between his teeth was moist and horribly hot, and he ached viciously for a glass of ice water.

"How we doing?" he asked sluggishly to the driver, rubbing at his temple slowly.

"Five miles," was the short response, and Kurogane sighed in relief. Only a few more minutes of this damn heat.

The rest of the drive proceeded with little activity, the silence broken only by the rattling of the old engine and the crunch of gravel beneath the cab's tires as the driver turned onto a worn, one-lane road along the grassy fields of the countryside. They passed only one other house on the stretch of the road before curving along a dusty bend shaded by ancient oak trees, and it was here that the driver stopped.

"This one, right? Here you go."

Kurogane tossed the searing buckle from its lock at his hip, the seatbelt slapping against the car's plastic frame as he pressed a generous tip into the driver's outstretched hand, and climbed out of the cab. He pulled his duffle from the trunk and slung it over his shoulder with a grunt, shutting the lid quickly and holding up his hand in a subtle wave of gratitude as the cab spit out a cloud of exhaust and putted away down the dirt road.

The shade from the towering oaks provided a thin shelter from the sun's burning rays, and Kurogane took a moment to stand beneath the fluttering ceiling of fauna above him. The heavy humidity of the summer air sank into his pores with a weight he wasn't expecting—it was nearly as hot outside as it had been in the cab—and he swore quietly as he smeared his forearm across his brow.

Grabbing at his shirt to fan it against his chest, Kurogane's eyes wandered across his surroundings. He had been dropped off seemingly in the middle of nowhere, farmland and overgrown grass the only things visible for miles on either side of him. The road and golden fields were occasionally dotted with tall oaks and massive umbrellas of weeping willows, which whispered secrets too soft to be heard with each rivulet of air that rushed between them. When the warm breeze died down, a droning hum of insects echoed across the fields, gnats and hornets buzzing in the shade of the trees.

The house that he had passed was a gray blur in the heat of the summer day, a small square of worn, paint-stripped planks that stood alone in the expanse of dried weeds; and when Kurogane turned his eyes from the cloudless sky shining through the leaves above him, he faced his mother's home.

It was a small structure, large enough to accommodate only a handful of simple rooms and perhaps two bedrooms at most, given the appearance of the second floor. A wraparound porch had been repainted a crisp navy blue, but as Kurogane stepped closer, he noticed that faded teal splotches were still visible beneath it. The rest of a house was covered in sun-bleached strips of white paint, which after years of heat had been baked into a faded cream. It was clearly an old home, but his mother had always had a liking for fixer-upers, and so Kurogane found himself smiling at the small shred of familiarity that this gave him.

His boots scuffed along the pebbled walkway, creaking against the worn boards of the porch steps, and when he reached a hand out to pull open the screen door, he heard footsteps thudding in a crescendo behind the aged wooden one beneath it.

Suddenly, the door sprung open, and there she stood behind the screen, her image distorted within tiny black squares as if he was seeing her through the eyes of a fly—she was older than he remembered, frail and thin-fingered, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and creasing the sides of her lips as her mouth twisted behind her hand—and all he could think of was how long it had been since he had seen her.

Throughout the extent of his time in the military, she had sent him pictures, and they had exchanged letters, and he had received only three unbearable phone calls—but there were so many times where he dreaded even thinking about her, because he could see the unhealthiness in her skin beneath her framed smiles, in the shakiness of her thin script, and he could hear the feebleness in her words every time she spoke.

He knew the minute he set foot on his plane that morning that this moment was unavoidable, but now that it had come, his chest had tightened so fiercely that it was hard to breathe. All he could _see_ was her: bony hips and trembling fingers and thinned hair and pale skin. She looked so sick. She had always been sick, ever since she had been a little girl; ever since she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis after his birth; ever since she had caught a deadly case of pneumonia during their rain-plagued crossing through the Pacific to the frigid, ocean-slicked gates of Angel Island.

But now he _saw_ her, and grief and guilt had mixed into an acidic knot that tore away at his gut with each passing second, because he realized now just how selfish he had been by refusing to approach her until this moment.

His head swam, and ducking it quickly, Kurogane blinked away the damp heat pooling in his eyes. He took a rattling breath, dropped his duffle from his shoulder, and pulled open the screen door, wrapping one arm around the thin waist of the aged woman before him.

"Hey, Ma."

* * *

By the time that hugs and soft whispers had been exchanged and Kurogane's single bag brought into the house, the last rays of daylight were melting into dusk. They had moved to the kitchen to have a proper conversation, and everything—from the beige cabinets to the collection of blue-inked plates displayed along the high shelves—was basked in a burnt orange light. It glowed off the small glass lamps and the trays of silverware dotted along the counters, dripping in fat droplets down the side of Kurogane's glass of ice tea, and for a moment he found himself silently staring out the window across from him, watching the final light of day sweep between the golden fields.

It seemed to be only seconds before the sunset had been blanketed in a sheet of dusty navy, smudged away by a painter's hand, and Kurogane roused out of his daze as his mother refilled his glass of tea.

"So, you said your flight was good?" she asked softly.

"Yeah," Kurogane replied, taking a gulp of the cool drink. He eyed his mother's frail hands as she clicked on the gas burners and pulled out a frying pan, his lips twitching. "You don't have to do that, you know. I can—"

"Nonsense," Kazuki said curtly, swatting a hand at her son, "I can make my boy a nice meal if I want to." A filleted cut of tuna was pulled out from the fridge, marinated in a sweet mixture of herbs and sauces that made Kurogane's stomach prickle with hunger when he caught sight of it. Fish and rice was a common dinner during his family's constant travels, and despite the simplicity of the dish, it always reminded him of home. As she set the fish in the pan, Kazuki smiled. "Did you see anyone cute at the airport?"

Kurogane made a face at her, his cheeks reddening.

"_Okaa_," he grumbled, addressing her in his gravelly mother tongue, and received a playfully stern look in response.

"I know we have lived here a long time, but you can't forget your formality," Kazuki scolded, and Kurogane huffed like a punished child. "The proper phrase is—"

He nodded, swatting his fingers in the air. "Okaasan, know. I'm not a kid anymore, Ma."

Kazuki smiled at him, turning to push the fish around the pan a few times with her spatula. The sizzle of oil and the smell of fresh herbs had filled the kitchen, and it wasn't long before the fish was flipped, patted, halved, and then served. Kurogane watched his mother's boney wrist tremble as she extended her arm to set his plate down, and he moved quickly to support it for her, his brows furrowing. His mother caught his gaze and shook her head.

"It's nothing. You go ahead and eat, now."

Clearing her throat, the thin woman set her plate down and moved to her chair, scooting it closer behind her. It was a slow process as her fingers tightened around their armrests, easing her body with tentative care onto her seat. Kurogane's gaze flickered to the floor, and he wasn't sure whether this was to give her privacy or to tear his eyes away from the signs of her visibly struggling.

Silence filled the room uncomfortably, and he didn't realize how tight his jaw was clenched until his teeth started to ache. She was acting differently. It wasn't just the frailty that she was carrying herself with, because she had always been a frail woman. It wasn't even old age. He had watched enough elders through his time in and out of examination rooms to know when a person was crumbling away from too many years.

This was new.

"What's wrong?"

His words came out rougher than he had intended, and his mother looked up at him in surprise.

"You haven't touched your fish," she murmured, ignoring his question.

"_Ma_." Abruptly, he dropped the fork he had been fiddling with, the metal creating an ugly squeal against his plate. Kazuki stilled and pressed her lips. "Why're you jumping around this? You're not telling me something." His voice was starting to twist into a biting, desperate tone, and his legs had a violent urge to pace across the room. He slid his hands into his lap and stared down at them, clenching and unclenching his fists slowly. After a moment, he swallowed, and his mother looked away. "You're sick again, aren't you?"

"It's not for you to worry about, Kurogane," she started quietly, but her son angrily cut her off.

"Yes it is! How can you say that?" At the silence he received, his frustration loosened, replaced instead by concern. "Ma, I…" He sighed, his brow twisting. "I know I'm not…I know you think I don't need to hear it… But, I can handle it. I need to know." His frown deepened, his fingertips rubbing his knuckles uneasily. Hesitantly, ruddy brown eyes rose to look at hers, and at her distant expression, his voice cracked into a pitiful whisper. "Kaasan…"

Kazuki stared mildly off to her right, wrinkles creasing her thin brow. She closed her eyes and exhaled, turning back to him.

"I was feeling chest pains, last month," she said finally, "and then my stomach started hurting. I knew it was the tuberculosis, again. So, I went to see Doctor Sakurazuka." Kazuki paused, breathing a little shakily as a set of coughs rattled her chest. She pressed a hand over her sternum, clearing her throat once they had passed. "He ran a few tests, and I was right. They came back positive. But, apparently…these last few infections left scar tissue along my lungs."

Kurogane's eyes watched her steadily, his breathing still. "And…?"

Kazuki sighed, blinking away the dewy sheen in her eyes. "It's spreading."

"Tuberculosis can spread?"

"It's not common, but…yes, they have had several cases of it. Doctor Sakurazuka said that right now, it's attacking my organs…and, there's a…well, there's a possibility of it developing into something else. But they're not sure, yet."

Kurogane stared at his mother wordlessly. He had been expecting the worst: lung disease, internal failure, cancer. But somehow, having this be the cause of her breakdown—the very illness she had struggled with all her life rearing its filthy head to sink its fangs into her once more—seemed that much more damaging, because it was such a simple disease. With the right medication, patients could be treated from it with little difficulty. But she had been treated repeatedly, and it just kept coming back. Now, here it was again, tearing away one of his last floating lifelines and dragging her down deeper than it ever had before.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he muttered after a long moment, his hands tense. "What if something happened to you and I never knew? What if—"

"But it didn't," Kazuki reassured him, and as much as he hated the way that her false optimism always shielded her inner fear, it was how she had always been.

Kurogane looked into her shining eyes for what felt like an eternity before standing rigidly from the table, leaving his plate untouched. He walked briskly down the narrow hall and snatched his duffle from the foyer, making his way up the uneven steps to shut himself into the darkness of the second bedroom.

* * *

The first night, he dreamed of Cambodia. He was nineteen, still green out of a year of training. It was a quiet trek, a sidetrack south to unite with the formation stationed in Vietnam, but the wreckage of guerrilla battles from days passed remained strewn across the jungle path like debris from an explosion. Acid-burnt skin and fly-infested gashes were piled at his feet in endless numbers, and a woman missing half of her face stared at him with white eyes.

The second night, he dreamed of My Lai. It was his first true action in the war. He was a few weeks shy of twenty, just fourteen months into service, when his commander told him to gun down anyone in sight. He didn't understand why, but every marine around him was drilling through their shells as if throwing down poker chips. He took only three shots. An old man with a shaking gun tried to shoot him in the chest. A desperate woman dressed in rags pulled a knife on him to slit his throat. He put a bullet between the dark eyes of a screaming child that didn't look a day over four, and fell to his knees when her shrill voice silenced.

The third night, he didn't dream. Lungs aching and back slick, he peeled his damp shirt from his skin and slung it onto the floor, burying his face into his hands. In the darkness of his palms, he saw the haunted eyes of an old Iranian man who had lost everything, and heard the distant cries of a Yugoslavian infant as it was shoved away with its mother. Six years. Only six years, and he could never forget.

Squinting into the pale moonlight of his small room, Kurogane groped through the darkness to grapple at one of the prescription bottles sitting on his nightstand. The orange container rattled in his grip, and he didn't give the label one glance as he pressed his palm against the locked cap and twisted it impatiently. He had gotten to a point where he didn't care what they were, anymore.

He tipped two blue capsules of diphenhydramine into his palm, hesitated, and then dropped another one in for good measure.

* * *

The first week passed by slowly.

With the closest town over half an hour away, Kurogane busied himself with housework. He sanded paint-peeling boards from the sides of the old house, washing them down and repainting them. He knocked out splintered legs from the porch railing and hammered in new ones in their place. He pulled up ripped strips of caulking from the windows and replaced them.

He found himself working for hours at a time, lost in the sun's heat against the back of his neck, and the acrid scents of sawdust and paint. It felt good to get his hands working. However, after pushing through two straight days of labor, his shoulder had started to ache viciously, and Kazuki noticed. She told him not to tire himself, and so he reluctantly lessened his pace.

By the second week, Kurogane had exhausted his short list of to-do's, and found himself standing aimlessly in the shade of the porch steps. He was supposed to be here to relax, to take it easy. But he didn't know how.

Six years of war had ingrained a mantra in him to never stop moving. Always stay at the head of the pack, always stay alert, always be ready to fight. When he wasn't fighting, he was leading; when he wasn't leading, he was scouting; when he wasn't scouting, he was getting shot at. And one skilled shot put a hole through his shoulder.

He had been going to physical therapy for months, but it seemed no matter how much work he put into his shoulder, the pain would always come back. There were days where Kurogane wished that his surgeons had just cut the damn arm off.

Rolling his shoulder a little to grind out the tension that had formed, Kurogane stood from the porch steps. It was Tuesday morning, and his mother had a follow-up appointment with Doctor Sakurazuka at noon. They had two hours until then, but the drive to New Orleans was every bit of an hour, and Kazuki wanted time to fill out paperwork. He heard the screen door creak open behind him, and made a note to oil the hinges when he got back. He should've remembered that.

After helping her down the walkway and into the lowered passenger seat of his dusty white pickup, Kurogane pulled himself into the driver's seat and shifted the truck into gear. The engine roared to life, and they rumbled down the stretch of their gravel road towards the sunlit highway.

* * *

Jazz lived in the veins of New Orleans, leaking into every nook and cranny of the city in a lively blend of brass and strings. It seemed that from the open doors of every café poured the sounds of flowing piano chords and lazy bass strums. On street corners, trumpeters blasted a flourish of energetic notes, and the famous works of Louis Armstrong hummed distantly from the record players of upper-floor salons.

Kurogane had never considered himself a large fan of jazz, despite living in that very city for more than three years during his family's move in his second year of high school, but he couldn't deny that the raw energy of the music had grown on him. It had a lively quality to it, like nothing he had ever heard; the way the slap of fingers on strings made the beat jump, and how, with everything playing together, that music sang on its own.

Kazuki, on the other hand, enjoyed any type of music she could listen to, and tapped her toes with a smile as they drove down the tree-lined streets of the French Quarter. Her doctor's office was in an older building along the Mississippi, just outside the Quarter. Kurogane passed under two stoplights before turning onto a thin street beside the water, and pulled into a parking lot near the building. The air smelled of pastries and coffee, and he wrinkled his nose slightly as he stepped out of the truck, the honey-glazed scent too sweet for his soured mood.

He walked his mother into the building, took the elevator to the second floor, and helped her sign in at the reception desk. It made his skin prickle to realize that he had been helping her with more things in these two weeks than he had in seemingly his whole life. He needed to stop thinking about it. His thoughts scribbled angrily beneath his eyelids—

_She's fine_

**_She's sick_**

_She's dying_

_She's fine_

—and he blinked them away in frustration. He tried to forget why he was here.

Absently, he looked out the windows along the back wall of the waiting room, and found himself thinking of France. He had been stationed in Europe for a brief period, and the French coastline had been their first stop. They hadn't stayed long, but it was a country that sang of history and passion, and he had enjoyed their short passage through it.

He realized then that Kazuki was telling him something, and he raised his brows in response.

"—gane? The doctor's ready to see me. Are you coming with me, or do you want to stay here?"

He didn't know which was worse—spending an hour thinking about if she was going downhill, or spending an hour listening a doctor tell her she was going downhill. He figured that hearing it with his own ears was better than speculating about it. He needed to accept that his mother was sick again, but he just couldn't wrap his mind around it, and he wasn't sure why.

"I'll come."

"Alright, then."

They walked down a carpeted hall that reeked of air fresheners and sterilization, following a smiling nurse that guided them into another office off to the side and then into an examination room. After a few starter questions, the nurse encouraged Kazuki to sit on the patient's bed and left to retrieve her doctor. Kurogane folded his arms and sighed.

"It'll be fine," Kazuki said lightly, and Kurogane gave her a quiet look. He shook his head.

"You know it ain't fine, Ma," he muttered, and she smiled halfheartedly.

"Well, it's nothing I haven't gone through before," she stated simply, and the cheeriness in her tone made Kurogane's chest tighten.

She was losing strength in every muscle she had, her tuberculosis had never been this strong and she was visibly terrified by it, but she smiled for him—she had just lost her husband, and her son was a wreck, and she was falling apart, but she was still _smiling_ at him. Kurogane looked sharply away, and when he exhaled shakily, his lungs felt like a knife had pushed through them.

The door swung open and was closed gently behind a white-coated figure.

"Hello, again," said a pleasant voice.

"Doctor Sakurazuka, it's so nice to see you."

"Please, Miss Suwa, you can call me Seishiro. Lovely day today, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, it's beautiful!"

"If I could just get out of my office, it'd be great. And hello, Kurogane, I haven't seen you in quite a while."

Kurogane grunted in acknowledgement, but his gaze was fixed firmly on the window. The conversation before him passed by in a blur, and while part of him blocked out words he didn't want to hear, he was listening cautiously for the doctor's diagnosis.

"Now, then, let me just run through your records again…same medication as last visit, alright…have you experienced any changes in your symptoms? Anything getting better, worse?"

"I feel like it's harder for me to stay active, now."

"More so than last time?"

"Yes."

"Alright... I'm going to do a few reflex tests, then…okay…okay, all good there. Now, let's see about your muscle strength. I need you to push your arm up against my hand…yep, like that. Okay, are we feeling any pain?"

"No."

"Good. Okay, now push down…mnhm. So, fine there. Now your leg…yep, push forward again…okay…a little weaker here, yes?"

"It's harder for me to stand, for a long time."

"Alright."

Kurogane closed his eyes. He didn't know how long the examination continued, but he built up a wall and kept the soft conversation out. After a moment, he stared out of the window again, and watched ferries paddling slowly along the river below. Pockets of people stood along the water, snapping pictures of tourist areas and chatting about everyday activities, and for a moment he let his gaze drift before he felt his brow wrinkle.

A man in a wheelchair, sitting on the sidewalk beside an aged brick building, had caught his attention. He looked too young to be sitting in a wheelchair, and from what Kurogane's sharp eyes could see, there seemed to be no signs of physical injury. But something seemed off about him. Beneath a straight curtain of jet black hair, dark eyes stared blankly across the water of the Mississippi, and for the extent of time that Kurogane watched him, his gaze barely shifted an inch.

It was then that pale fingers emerged from the shadows of the building's awning, the figure belonging to the hands hidden as the man was wheeled slowly from his position in the sun back into the shop. His gaze remained fixed forward, even as he turned.

There was something about that gaze that stuck with Kurogane, as if he had seen a man's history splayed out nakedly from a distance. He continued to look at the water curiously a moment before turning back to his mother.

She was still talking with Seishiro, but her voice had become hushed and serious, and Kurogane realized in her expression that the resurfacing of her illness was more serious than she had made it to be. Seishiro was prescribing her pain relievers, and muscle relaxers, and pills for nausea and stomach sickness. A feeling like dread welled up in Kurogane's stomach, but even as his mother gathered her papers and walked beside him to their truck, she still said nothing.

They sat in the heat of the pickup for a few minutes, letting cool air blow through the open windows and playing a news station quietly on the stereo, but the silence that hung between them was heavy and uncomfortable. When Kurogane accepted that she wasn't ready to speak about it yet, he flipped the ignition and headed back home.

* * *

"D'you know them?" Kurogane asked at last, turning onto their gravel road. Kazuki hadn't said a word the entire ride, and the lack of conversation had been too unnerving for him to leave alone. He had described the man that he had seen, unable to get the image of those eyes out of his mind, and his mother had straightened quickly at the mention of him.

"Now you listen to me, Kurogane," she said lowly, and he turned his head to look at her, confused at what had caused such a sharp change in her tone, "Don't you ever get involved with those people. Do you hear me? You leave them alone."

Kurogane glanced at the road before turning back to her, his brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Just don't bother with them, alright?"

His mother smiled faintly for him, and he looked back at the road with a frown.

* * *

The fourth night, he dreamed of the desert graves of Mongolia.

The fifth night, he dreamed of the bloodied civil war of the Philippines.

The six night, he dreamed of his mother.

The seventh night, he stared into the starless galaxy of his ceiling, his comforters slung off of him and his right arm pressed to his forehead. He had to help her. He _had_ to.

Kurogane pulled his thin sheets across his waist and closed his eyes, trying to sink into sleep once more.

* * *

**I have written a monster. I. I can't even. I don't know if I should feel proud of myself for actually writing something with a nice word count to it, or feel ashamed for not crawling out of my hermit hole this weekend. *throws up hands* Anyways. It is 1:17 in the morning and I am astonished that I actually finished this chapter, for one, and that it turned out this long. I'm sorry if this was a bit of a drag for you to read, considering most of my writings barely scrape around 1K words, but in that respect, I am quite happy for writing much, much more than I usually do. **

**On another note, I was very surprised to see that I already have reviews and followers for this story! Leik, guys! *gushes and fails at typing* Thank you so much! You are amazing and very encouraging, and I appreciate every review/suggestion/follower that I get. I'm not sure when the next update will be (I'm sorry for my godawful inconsistency), but I'm going to get started on chapter 3 soon, with my finals permitting! So thank you all again, and hopefully I'll have an update up soon!**


	3. Chapter 3

_**3**_

* * *

For the first time in five months, Kurogane's thoughts were not on the war.

Sprawled across his bed in a tangle of sheets and old clothes, a gentle rain patting against the screen of his open window, he stared up at his ceiling in confusion. He was supposed to be lying awake because of the memories and the tremors. Because one pill wasn't enough and he needed another. Not because of this.

It had been a week after his mother's diagnosis, and he was still thinking about that man. That strange, hollow shell of a man who perhaps, in another time, had been something better; and the still, pale hands that had turned him away.

His mother had coldly told him to not get involved with them. But who the hell _were_ they? Why did she care?

His brow wrinkled when he considered that maybe it wasn't just her. It was an unfortunate reality of society, but there were always those who were shunned, for whatever reason it may be.

Glancing at his window, Kurogane recounted his own ignorance as a teenager. Whatever prejudices he carried before his enlistment had been wiped away when he ventured out into the world of war, and understood that no one was really better.

Everyone killed for the same reasons, believing to be on the right side—everyone had family or lovers or religion or patriotism, something to push them through—and this realization made him see that no one's actions were truly justified. After six years of service, he returned to a world he had been blinded from in his youth, and saw with shocking clarity the obliviousness of society. Adjusting to this foreign world seemed impossible to him, until he remembered that he, too, had once been of that mindset.

Perhaps the man his mother had so gravely warned him about was a product of this foreign world—a person viewed as abnormal, and turned away for his differences. But what if nothing was wrong with him? What if he, like himself, was haunted by a past that had stripped away all the qualities of the person he used to be?

Kurogane rubbed his palms across his face, exhaling heavily as he stared at the ceiling above.

"Goddamn," he rumbled lowly. He turned to his side to squint at the clock on his nightstand. It was four in the morning, and sleep wasn't coming to him anytime soon.

Digging his fingers into the edges of his mattress, he pulled himself up with a grunt and decided that he needed a drink.

* * *

_Nantes, France_

_1968_

_In the darkness of an old apartment, a young man is crouched against the oven of a small kitchen. His fingers grab shakily at the open door frame, his breathing uneven as he hesitantly turns his head to peer into the next room. Papers and broken vases litter the floor, illuminated by the slow passage of a flashlight, which swings abruptly to the doorway where he sits. In a panicked shot, a bullet ricochets off the wood, tearing off a chunk of white paint as it flies into the cabinet under the sink. The man rips his head away from the door frame, pressing his palm to his mouth to smother his cry of surprise._

_In the ransacked room, a deep voice grumbles thunderously in French._

_"I told you not to shoot!"_

_The man who fired the gun jerks the weapon towards the kitchen, waving his hand defensively. _

_"I saw something!"_

_A women's voice is heard in a muffled struggle, broken by a series of sobs._

_"Please, just let me go…I don't have it…please…I don't have it!"_

_"Shut that bitch up," the deep voice snaps, and there is a sharp contact of skin._

_In the kitchen, the young man stares in horror at the other side of the room. He moves his hand from his lips, breathing shakily._

_"They're going to find us," he whispers nervously, his voice strained, petrified._

_Another voice hisses quietly from the shadows, "No they won't."_

_The woman in the other room begins to whimper, one of the men's voices aggressively murmuring threats to her. The young man squeezes his eyes shut._

_"What are we going to do?" he breathes out after a moment, looking up at his brother. _

_Another man steps out from the shadows, a butcher's knife clenched in his pale fingers. His twin, crouched by the door frame, stares at him in disbelief and opens his mouth to speak, but the older brother shakes his head at him, his blue eyes fixed on the doorway. There is the sound of ropes being cut from the other room, the woman's voice gasping for breath between terrified cries. The deep voice begins to roar in aggravation._

_"I asked you where the fucking money is!"_

_"I don't have it!" _

_She begins to scream, a table crashing to the floor. The man's footsteps thump viciously around the room._

_"Where is it?!"_

_"I don't know…!"_

_Suddenly, the young man's face is illuminated in a surge of bright light, his vision blinded. He pushes away from the door frame, his back smacking against the metal stove._

_The bulky man holding the flashlight turns his head, yelling anxiously, "There's a goddamn kid in here! I thought you said this place was clean!"_

_"What?!"_

_It's a flurry of motion, the room spinning in a haze of flashlights, blood littering the floor as the older brother stabs the knife into shadowed figure's arm. He howls in pain, stumbling against the cabinets._

_The young man wrenches his brother to his feet, screaming at him, "Run!"_

_His brother runs, darting into the sitting room and ducking under three shots of bullets, panting hoarsely. His mother cries out from the floor of the other room._

_"Fai! Yuui! Get out of here, get out—" The deep-voiced man directs one of his men to block the other entrance to the room, stalking through the butler's nook that the young men ran through, lifting his gun. The woman sobs, hitting her hands desperately on the floor. "No! No, it's in Avignon, with Christophe, it's in Avignon, that's all I—!"_

_A bullet plummets through her skull, and she falls to her side. The deep-voiced man continues to pursue the young men angrily._

_"Don't let them get out of here alive," he snaps lowly. A thinner man raises a gun to shoot from the other entrance of the room, but the older brother steps swiftly before him, pushing the knife deep into his chest. He grunts sharply as he falls back against the wall, grasping the knife with whitening hands. The younger brother bolts out of the apartment with his twin, a bullet cracking into the wall beside his head. The older brother's chest heaves, his hands speckled with blood, his hazy gaze fixed on the stairway at the end of the hall._

Get out.

Get out get out **get out**—

_The younger brother runs downs the second flight of stairs, stumbling near the bottom and grabbing onto the railing with a hoarse breath._

_"Oh god," he pants out, his eyes glassing over. His twin grabs him, pushing him out the door and into the rain-slicked city streets._

_"Keep running!" he shouts breathlessly. Enraged gunshots fire through the hall windows. The younger brother does, his chest tight. He has a hard time breathing._

_"Yuui," he whimpers, sucking in a breath of air, "Mom's dead. Mom's—oh god, what—what do we—what do we do—"_

_"We have to find Uncle," the older brother says quickly. He looks over at his twin's teary eyes as they run, his throat dry. "We'll be okay, Fai, we'll—"_

_There are more gunshots, much louder than the ones from the window. The older twin realizes quickly that they are being chased. He swears sharply and diverts his brother towards another alley. A bullet rips through the side of his shirt, searing against the skin over his ribs. Another one flies over his twin's mess of blond hair. The younger brother gasps for breath, and there is a heartbeat before a bullet shoots through his skull. His twin watches the light leave his glassy eyes._

_The older brother hits the ground hard, tripping over his own feet and his hands painfully breaking his fall. He barely dodges another shot._

_He stares in shock, his blue eyes wide. There is a scream trapped in his throat, but he can't find the air to release it. A car's wheel's screech from the street they turned off of, the engine roaring closer. His head snaps up, his vision a blur, and he staggers to his feet, sprinting down the alley. His side prickles with pain and his palms are bleeding. _

_He jumps a vined gate at the street's dead-end, turns onto another alley, and keeps running, tears streaming down his face._

* * *

In the darkness of the narrow hallway, Kurogane traced the unfamiliar bubbles of wallpaper beside him, his steps creating slow groans and creaks on the uneven flooring. This house was strange, foreign to him—everything from the simple décor to the chipped doorknobs was a compilation of alien objects that he had never seen before.

His mother had vowed to wipe out any traces of their old life, to avoid resurfacing memories of his late father. As a result, he felt caught in a limbo, the only thing reminiscent of his childhood being the smell of his mother's cooking and her kind touch.

He stepped into the kitchen, working to discard these thoughts as a more pressing matter filled his mind. His fingers were starting to shake, and whether this was from the pills or the lack of sleep, he didn't know. Leaning over the small refrigerator, he pulled open the lower door impatiently and scanned the shelves, a tick in his jaw.

"Shit, come on," he rumbled lowly, pushing aside a milk carton and fruit canisters, digging behind a sleeve of eggs and a wrapped loaf of bread. He pushed farther into the back of the fridge, and started to feel something close to panic welling in his chest—did she find it and throw it out?—before his fingers closed around the cold neck of a glass bottle. Slowly, he released the breath he had been holding.

He pulled the bourbon out hastily, wetting his lips as he unscrewed the cap with a trembling grip, and took a quick swig. The whiskey was cheap, but the burn it left from his throat to his stomach was satisfying enough, and he wiped his mouth before shutting the refrigerator door.

In the silence of the dark room, he drank. Leaning against the counter by the sink, filtered moonlight sliding down his chest in the slow rivulets of raindrops that streaked the kitchen widow, he took swig after swig, and pressed his fingers to his shut eyes to ward off the thoughts and memories that overflowed him. It was a struggle to accept that the pills weren't working, but it was apparent, and when they didn't work, he turned to alcohol.

Sighing lowly as he tapped the bottle against the counter, Kurogane didn't catch the quiet creaking of footsteps coming from the stairs. He tightened his grip on the whiskey, lifting it to his lips to take another swig just as his mother stepped slowly into the room.

"She said you were becoming quite the alcoholic," she murmured softly. Kurogane froze, his gaze jolting to her in surprise before he lowered his face in shame. He cleared his throat uneasily.

"Who…?"

"Daidouji."

"You were talking to her?"

Kazuki turned her head to the side, explaining simply, "I kept in touch with her, since you wouldn't talk to me. She understood."

Kurogane frowned at the floor, his brows furrowing. Kazuki watched him hesitantly before approaching him, pulling her thin shawl closer around her shoulders.

"I don't want you to turn into your father," she whispered, a bitter hint of desperation in her tone, "I don't need to go through that again."

Kurogane's eyes narrowed.

"I ain't turning into dad—"

"Drinking whiskey at this time?" She snatched the bottle away from him, her dark eyes staring up into his pleadingly. "Don't tell me that. Not when you're doing this." She set the bottle to the side and wrapped her arms around herself, shaking her head. Hoarsely, she released a breath. "I know you're going through a lot right now, Kurogane, but…don't turn to this. Please, for me, just don't—"

"You don't know half the hell I'm going through." Kurogane stared coldly outside the window, his hands braced on the counter behind him.

Kazuki stared at him in a stunned silence. After a long moment, she spoke roughly, her brittle voice crackling with pain, "I'm _dying_, Kurogane." She glared at him angrily, her dark eyes glassy. "The damn stuff is eating me alive. It's moving so fast they can't even put a time stamp on it. Do you know what that feels like?" Kurogane's eyes clenched shut, his jaw tight. "My lungs could give up on me any day, and I don't have any other choice but to keep fighting through it. And I'm so _tired_, Kurogane, I have fought this my whole life and I'm _so tired_."

"You don't think I know what that feels like?!" Kurogane turned harshly to her, his voice biting. "I shot _kids_, Ma! They sent us in to massacre towns, and—and we just piled up bodies without even giving them a goddamn grave—do you even know how much I'm fucking _haunted_ by that?!" His eyes felt hot, and his chest was heaving with sharp breaths. "And we were supposed to feel _proud_ about that. Do you know how—how many times I've put a gun in my mouth and just—just _tried_—"

He pressed a hand to his chest, swearing through a tight breath as he turned away. He inhaled quickly, exhaling in a tense whoosh, in and out, in and out, like the nurse said, shaking his head gruffly to keep the tears of panic and remorse from spilling over his eyelashes.

"Dammit," he panted quietly, his feverish tone melting into a hushed whisper. Kazuki stared at him with wide eyes, her expression torn between shock and melancholy. Her mouth crinkled into a mournful frown as she wrapped her arms around him, rubbing his back slowly.

"_Youou_," she murmured in their mother tongue, her voice trembling, "_I'm sorry... I'm sorry, my son, I'm sorry..._"

Kurogane sighed heavily, closing his eyes, and he hugged his mother's frail form tightly. He slowly gathered his breathing, the faint tremble in his fingers softening against her back.

"I'm not gonna let you die."

The words tumbled out in a slow breath, and Kazuki began to sob quietly into his shirt. He pressed his palm to the graying hair that tumbled down her thin shoulders, leaning down to rest his head against hers.

A tear fell across his cheek, sliding along his jawline to pool into the dip of his chin, but in the stillness of the dark room, he didn't notice.

* * *

_I can't_

_Feel_

_I can't feel_

_Anything_

_What is this_

_Where are we?_

We have to hide.

_But where?_

I promise, I'll keep you safe.

You need to rest.

_I can't see_

_I can't feel_

_Where_

I'll keep you safe.

_Am_

I promise.

_I?_

* * *

In the heat of his white pickup, Kurogane sped down Route 90, one hand hanging outside the lip of his open window. A tropical storm was brewing from the south, the local weather station painting it in an unpleasant light, and out of last-minute precaution, Kazuki had urged him to run into town and pick up a few missing necessities. Along the way, he figured that he may as well enjoy a drive.

With his back seat filled, and a familiar mix of coastal and swamp air billowing around him, Kurogane had subconsciously started heading towards New Orleans. He wasn't entirely sure why, but in the calm before the storm, the glow of the city was alluring to him. That, and his stomach was roaring viciously. A good bowl of seafood gumbo sounded heavenly, about now.

It wasn't long before he crossed the west bridge into the city, and found a spot along a canal in the French Quarter to park. He stepped out into the muggy summer air and, despite himself, felt a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. He knew exactly where he to go.

After crossing through a maze of brick alleys and tree-laden streets, Kurogane strode into a dimly-lit corner café. It was a small space, nothing more than a hole in the wall, with a thin strip of outdoor seating—but even after six years, it had hardly changed. The interior was decorated with newspaper clippings of Mardi Gras parades, painted masks, and historic photos of the city—just as it had always been—while the outer space, more dressed up than he remembered, was a simple mix of iron furniture and hanging plants.

He sat himself at the bar, glancing up at a flickering TV set that flashed scenes of political news and weather reports of the oncoming storm. The shadow of a bartender passed in front of him.

"What can I get you, honey?"

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but he didn't think too long on it as he looked away from the TV. Then he blinked several times before furrowing his brows. Was that her?

"Souma?" he asked abruptly, a puzzled frown at his mouth. The woman in front of him responded with a humored cough before smiling teasingly.

"The one and only," she chimed, "I must be gettin' popular around here." Then she squinted, arching one dark brow, and smacked a hand against the bar before bursting into laugher. "Lord, I'm seeing things! I gotta be!" She waved a finger in his direction, leaning on her elbow with a grin. "You were a skinny little grump-ass the last time I saw you. Not skinny anymore." She frowned thoughtfully. "Still a grump-ass."

Kurogane scoffed, folding his arms. He met her during his family's three-year stay in the city, and had done his best to keep in touch while they were still traveling. After all this time, she had hardly changed—still curvy and big-boned, her curly hair straightened into a short bob, a teasing spark in her dark eyes.

"Shaddup," he huffed, but smirked warmly. "I could say the same for you. What happened? GW's not cutting it anymore?"

Souma made a face at the mention of the high-scale restaurant, and shook her head.

"It paid my way through college, I'll give it that—but let me tell you, I ain't ever doing that again."

"Why's that?" he asked with a snicker.

"Oh, lemme _tell_ you. You would not believe what I went through." Souma began counting off her fingers, "Bad tips, I mean _bad _tips—you get a two hundred dolla' bill and you give me ten and some change? Excuse me? And there were _weeks_ where I never got a break. And then my mama got into a new marriage—" She raised her hand. "—don't ask. You don't wanna know. Anyways. Four years, I was outta there. Done."

By this point, Kurogane was close to wheezing from his laugher. He cleared his throat noisily, a few more chuckles rumbling out of him.

"So why come back here?"

"It was my favorite spot as a teen, all locals, good manager, so hey. It's like my wind-down, believe it or not."

"I believe you."

Souma grinned, her glossy lips shining in the dim light.

"Yeah, you always did. So what about you? I haven't seen you in, what…five or six years? What's new with you?"

Kurogane shrugged, tapping his fingers on the counter.

"Not much. Finished school and got enlisted. Dad's liver gave out while I was in service…I didn't find out until I got out."

Souma glanced down at the bar with a sympathetic frown.

"Sorry to hear that. I'm sure it's rough for your mama."

"Yeah."

She hesitated a moment, pressing her lips.

"You doin' okay? I mean, I've heard a lotta stuff. Those protesters worked hard to get our boys back early, and…now they've got all these soldiers talking about it. And to think we've still got people fighting over there."

"Yeah, I know." Kurogane glanced up at the TV. "I'm okay."

Souma tilted her head, observing him quietly before patting his hand with a nod.

"I'll get you some tea."

She returned after a moment with two iced glasses, and slipped around the bar to sit beside him. It felt like they had never stopped talking—like it was them in 11th grade all over again, snickering about bad teachers and talking about life dreams. She had been one of the few relationships in his life that had held together, despite everything.

After pleasant moment of casual chatter, they began to open up to deeper conversation. She talked about her mother's abusive marriage, her younger brother's drop-out from school, and how happy she had been to finally go to college and buy her own apartment. He told her about his father's worsening alcoholism, about how his family's latter days of traveling had started to become hectic and stressful, and how the military was originally an escape for him. Then he stated simply that the war had changed that, and he didn't want to talk about it, and she understood.

Over bowls of seafood gumbo, they laughed about politics, joked about tourists, and talked fondly of their high school memories. It was nearing two hours later when Souma's manager finally leaned out of the kitchen to warn her that the dinner rush would be coming in soon, and she stuck up her thumb in a blunt dismissal before giving Kurogane an apologetic smile, and clearing their dishes from the bar.

He paid her a nice tip and stood from the barstool, slipping his wallet into his back pocket.

"Now you come see me if you need anything," Souma called, and he nodded with a smile, waving goodbye to her as he stepped out of the café. A cool coastal breeze was starting to pick up, creating an echo of rustling leaves, and Kurogane remembered that he needed to get going.

He took a shortcut through back alleys, walking briskly through clouds of steam from restaurant kitchens and laundromats. His mother was probably worried sick about him, which would be no surprise. And those groceries—damn, he forgot. None of them were supposed to be refrigerated, right?

He made it back onto the main street, just one block from where he parked. It was a short walk from here, and he was halfway to his truck when he slowed, recognizing the architecture of a building across the street. He turned to look despite his instinct to ignore it, stopping in his tracks when he realized what it was—that shop, the one he had seen from his mother's examination room. But the man in the wheelchair was nowhere to be seen.

Curiosity prickled in his stomach. He had been thinking about that man ever since then, confused by his mother's harsh warning and her lack of explanation. There had to be some reason for her to feel that way.

He looked over the canal, studying the storm brewing from the south. He had time.

Kurogane glanced across the street, waiting for a car to pass before he sprinted to the other side, and looked up at the shop curiously. There was no business logo, no text—only a wooden sign hung above the door, with a painted symbol of a circle and two horizontal lines. The shop's windows were dusty, and closed blinds hid its interior from public view.

In the pit of his stomach, he felt a slight chill run through him. Something about this place didn't feel right—it felt abnormal, like it didn't belong. Like it was trying to stay hidden for a reason.

His eyes narrowed, and he hesitated a moment before pulling open the door and stepping through the threshold.

* * *

_Paris, France_

_1968_

_"You mean to tell me that my brother has been housing illegal drugs?"_

_The male voice speaks in an incredulous manner, the pale face that it belongs to twisting into a confused frown._

_"My nephew," he continues, "I know things have been…hard for your family, financially—but I know Christophe, he would never—"_

_"Uncle," a softer voice protests, and the young man standing at the window turns suddenly, his fists clenched, "you don't understand—he didn't—he didn't _keep _it, he _sold_ it. Someone else grew it. I didn't even know. Fa…" He bites his lip, hanging his head. "…we didn't know."_

_The young man's uncle looks at his hands in contemplation, his forehead wrinkled. He releases a slow breath and rubs a hand across his face._

_"So," he starts simply, "What does this mean for us? Because my idiot brother chose to get involved with a drug cartel, we're all being targeted?"_

_"Don't speak about Father that way," the young man growls angrily. He hesitates before whispering, "Even if it wasn't the right thing to do, it kept a roof over our heads."_

_His uncle studies him silently. He pushes his dark hair from his face and rests his cheek on his fist, looking at the floor._

_"But they will be coming after us, assuming Freya's information was incorrect."_

_The young man tenses, clenching his fingers into his palms._

_"Yes," he answers quietly._

_"Even if it was correct, the bastards will probably hunt us down anyway. We have information they want to keep quiet." His uncle taps his index fingers on his cheek, his brows knitting together. "I suppose we need to leave the country."_

_"But…it's…it's not just that, uncle." The young man swallows uneasily. "They…interrogated Mother. There was someone with them who wasn't part of the cartel…he knew about our family."_

_His uncle stills._

_"And…if Mother was telling the truth…then he knows where to find Father." The young man begins to pace, his voice shaking anxiously. "Don't you get it—they're crossing us out, one by one. It happened to Clow…to Chi…now to us."_

_"Yuui," his uncle murmurs._

_"We can't run away from that, Uncle. No matter what we do, they will hunt us down and—"_

_"Yuui." His uncle stands, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "We'll be alright." The young man stares at him with nervous eyes. "We'll just need to clean the slate. It's not hard to do. We go to a different country, file under different names—start a new life."_

_"But where can we go?"_

_"There are many countries where French is a common language. We can blend in, and then learn the main language while we're there."_

_"But we need to leave Europe—"_

_"I understand that. We can find a cheap port to sail into, and start there."_

_The young man looks at him cautiously, silent for a long moment before nodding. By the next day, they have packed their belongings, rewritten their passports, and boarded a ferry to New Brunswick._

* * *

The screened door clattered shut behind him as he crossed the sun-bleached threshold. A mix of incense and dust hung in the room, rustled by the opening of the door, and squinting in the hazy light, Kurogane looked around him.

The shop was small, crowded, and smelled like the pages of an ancient book. He felt his nose wrinkle in distaste. Littered across the floor were piles of odd antique relics that flowed into each other, forming mountains of vintage luggage, mason jars, and strange décor items. The wooden floor, where it was visible, was stripped of its finish and twisted unevenly with age.

Against the back walls were shelves that seemed to be filled with everyday kitchen items—jars of spices and herbs were clustered around small pots and cooking utensils. At a closer look, however, he saw that some were filled to the brim with a red power—it looked more like crushed rock than spices—and what he first thought was a canister of corn was, in fact, a collection of teeth.

A nervous twitch crept up his back the longer he looked.

Centered in the midst of all the clutter was a dark mahogany desk, which was the only clean object in the room. Three items sat on its polished surface: a moleskin notebook, a single leaf of paper, and a pen—all of which were, strangely, spotless.

Behind the desk was a wall that jutted out at an odd angle, presumably blocking a room hidden behind it, and to the right of the desk was an open doorway covered by cascading strings of gold beads.

There was no one in the room but him.

"Anyone there?" he tried, taking a step further and the old flooring groaning under his weight. He could hear a faint rustling behind the thin walls, but couldn't tell where exactly it was coming from. "Oi—"

A male voice answered him sharply, muffed between the sound of shuffling steps and thumping books.

"We're not open."

Kurogane clenched his jaw, his brows knitting together.

"Well, you don't have a 'closed' sign out," he noted, "You might want to change that."

Silence filled the void of a faint hesitation, before quiet footsteps grew louder behind the walls of the old building. Then, a door opened from the wall behind the desk, and a shadowed figure stepped out into the room.

"We're not open," the man repeated a little more firmly, a faint pinch of irritation between pale brows, "Now, please. Leave."

Kurogane pulled his gaze from the beaded doorway where it had been lingering, fixating on a tall man that stood with a stack of books under one arm. In the off-lighting of the room, he had a hard time seeing the man's face, and narrowed his eyes curiously. The stranger's stance stiffened in annoyance, and he breathed somewhat gruffly in his throat before stepping into the light, dropping the set of books loudly onto the desk.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" he snapped icily, and Kurogane found himself rooted in place at those _eyes_—eyes that were the color of moonlight on snow, drawn into a cool glare that was fierce and hauntingly beautiful all at once. The stranger was thin, pale, with a mess of flaxen blond locks drawn into a small ponytail at the back of his neck. He was garbed in a dreary pallet of gray and black—an unbuttoned vest sat over an old dress shirt and slacks, and he seemed more fit for the bellhop of a run-down hotel than a shop owner.

Kurogane parted his lips to speak, but found himself unable to put words together. Instinctively, he took a step back towards the door, and when he turned to free himself from the dust-clogged shop and the stranger's cold gaze, he was staring into the fogged eyes of the very man he had seen a week ago. He almost let out a yell of surprise. The man had wheeled himself into the beaded doorway, unnoticed in the silence, and his appearance was abrupt and frightening—something looked so_ wrong _about him, like he was screaming through his eyes.

Swallowing down his rushed breath, Kurogane gave the blue-eyed man a quick glance before he pulled open the shop's door, and quickly walked through the gusting storm winds the remaining half-block to his truck.

With his hands tight on the steering wheel, he drove home in silence.

* * *

**I did it. I am done. *collapses***

**Well, it turns out that this is both easy and difficult for me to write - meaning, in short, that hiatuses will be frequent. The reason I chose to write this in broken story lines (aka all the splits) was to help me not stay on one particular plot for too long (1) and also make sure that I keep moving to the end of the chapter (2). So far this method is really working out for me, so although I apologize for the pause between updates, I will tell you that I am definitely enjoying writing this story, and that I'm going to keep aiming for at least something -mildly- close to regular updates, which is the difficult part. But, I do this for personal enjoyment and to keep my imagination flowing, so sometimes that's not always in full stock, anyways. *excuses excuses***

**On another note, I would like to greatly thank all my readers and reviewers and everything, you have been really supportive with your suggestions and your comments, which is wonderful! You are so awesome! Now, I am going to try to keep the story rating at a high-T (with language and mild violence and that sort of thing) but let me know if you think that should change. **

**Also, for those of you already in school or getting ready to go into school, I wish you lots of luck with your school year! I'm heading into school myself so it will be a very busy year for me. Anyway, thank you all again, and I hope you had a wonderful summer!**


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